Combines for harvesting grain crops, in particular, have been known for many years. They have been responsible for effectively harvesting huge fields of wheat and other similar stalk types of grain in limited time with much saving in labor. To render the same more effective and efficient, recent developments in combines have resulted in the same becoming increasingly powerful, especially to achieve improved production in the harvested grain and also to increase the production capacity of the combines. This has also resulted in greatly increased cost of the combines.
With such increased cost of combines, efforts in recent years have been made to render such combines capable of harvesting not only conventional types of stalk grains such as wheat, oats, barley and the like, but also, with limited adjustment, rendering the combines capable of harvesting other types of grain crops such as corn, as well as also being capable of harvesting such crops as beans, such as soy beans for example, as well as other types of beans and the like.
Harvesting such a wide range of crops has required the development of improved threshing and separating mechanism in the combines with the general aim of minimizing replacement of certain components thereof in order to adapt the combine to harvesting one type of crop from another. Preferably, said aim has been in the direction of providing equipment which, essentially, requires only the adjustment of spacing or the like between the various coacting threshing elements of the combine, and machines generally capable of achieving these desired results constitute subject matter, for example, of the following prior patents, all assigned to the assignee of the present invention:
3,626,473 Dec. 7, 1971 3,645,270 Feb. 29, 1972 3,664,100 May 23, 1972 3,794,047 Feb. 26, 1974
Since the development of the machines comprising the subject matter of the foregoing patents, additional detailed improvements have been invented to render the operation of axial flow combines even more effective and the present invention represents one of said improvements.
Particularly in regard to the harvesting of crops having heavy stalk characteristics such as corn, as well as other crops having tough vines, which must be handled by a universal type combine, after the crop is cut by a header or other type of cutting unit, it is elevated to the axial flow type threshing and separating mechanism comprising one or more rotors operable in one or more cylindrical casings which include in a portion of the wall structure thereof concaves and grate units with which the rotors coact to achieve such threshing and separation of the grain from the crop material. The crop material is fed to such axial rotors by augers having coarse flights thereon mounted adjacent the forward end of the rotors.
Harvesting certain of the aforementioned types of crops have been found to result in undesirable wear upon the peripheral edges of such flights, thereby decreasing the efficiency of the combine especially as said wear increases. Replacement of a worn auger is a time consuming and relatively expensive operation and it is the general purpose of the present invention to minimize such replacement neccessities as well as increase the efficiency of said augers by improving the structure of the same in accordance with the details set forth hereinafter.